Missile Silo Witness October 7

September 20, 2017 By Bob Kinsey

A visit to Missile Silo N-8 to call for Keeping Space for Peace and Witness to the fact that Nuclear Weapons (49 in Colorado) will soon formally be by UN Treaty against international law

Sisters Ardeth Platte and Carol Gilbert, Dominican Nuns from Jonah House in Baltimore will be in Colorado in early October. Part of that time will be spent with us in Colorado Springs. They have a lot of history in Colorado and Colorado Springs. In September 2000 they along with 3 other Catholic Nuns were arrested at Peterson AFB during an open house for a direct action and jailed, acing serious charges. Those charges were ultimately dropped.
They returned in October 2002 for a olowshares action at nuclear missile N-8 in Weld County Colorado where they did a symbolic action temporarily taking off line a Minuteman III missile loaded with a 20 kiloton nuclear bomb, one of 49 such bombs in Colorado. . They were convicted of sabotage and received harsh sentences, 42 months for Ardeth, 36 months for Carol and 30 months for Jackie Hudson (now deceased).
They will be with us for a number of actions and events. Here is what is already firmed up with a few minor changes possible

On October 7 we will carpool from 420 Mesa Road at 9AM for a trip to join a group at silo N-8 for a vigil at 1 PM. Carol and Ardeth will be there as well as activists from Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins etc..
On October 9 we willl meet at Peterson AFB at 3:30 for a vigil with Ardeth and Carol who will present to base personnel a copy of the recently passed UN treaty banning nuclear weapons.
On October 10 we will carpool from 420 Mesa Road at 2:45 PM for a trip to Schriever AFB east of Colorado Springs.for an action at 3:30 combining bannering and a treaty presentation.
On October 10 at 7PM Ardeth and Carol will do a public presentation and Q&A at Colorado College (location to be firmed up)
On October 11 we will host a potluck and informal meeting at 420 Mesa Road at 6PM . Please RSVP so we know how many to plan for.

There will also be other activities including Colorado College classes , a possible visit with the local Catholic Bishop and possibly a visit with Mayor John Suthers who was DA here when they were arrested in 2000 and U.S. attorney overseeing their 2003 federal trial in Denver.. Be in touch if you can help with transportation etc.

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About Bob Kinsey

We are prone to self-righteousness if we call ourselves peacemakers, and yet do not perceive how the peace issue cuts through all the economic and social issues that we often try to keep separate. If the race for nuclear arms is encouraged by our fear of losing the affluent ways of life that we have taken for granted, then we must see how our fears and desires have left so many other human beings naked and hungry.

Malsolm Warford"The Church's Role in a Nuclear Age

Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be -– for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival.

Former President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009

So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see...

Mahatma Gandhifrom The Essential Gandhi, Louis Fisher, ed.

“Everything I did at Kings Bay was a result of my faith and my commitment to challenge the idols whose only purpose is to destroy human life on an unimaginable scale. I went to Kings Bay to use my body to refuse to bow down to these idols. I went to try to bring attention to the idolatry that it is requiring of our nation and its people. I went in a spirit of prayer and repentance. I went in hope that this witness might invite other people to reflect on the obscenity and on the idolatry that it is before God.”

Liz McAlisterKings Bay Protestor 2019

Over the past 15 years, the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor.

Mikhail Gorbachev, January 31, 2007

There are still thousands of warheads loaded on operational systems and standing on high states of alert on virtually hair-trigger posture. And you have to ask yourself: Why is that? Who is the enemy? What is the threat?

U.S. General Lee ButlerFormer Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command in 1991-92

Viewing Trinity Test July 16,1945: "Now we are all Sons of Bitches"

Kenneth BainbridgeDeputy Director

We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal ...

George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, January 4, 2007

Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death.

Albert Einstein, January 22, 1947

We seek the elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason.

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1995

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat…. Others subscribe to Churchill’s assertion ‘Peace is the sturdy child of terror.’ For me, such a peace is a wretched offspring, a peace that condemns us to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety, a peace that codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts….The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.

General Lee ButlerFormer Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending he sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --spoken to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 1953

Dwight EisenhowerUS President 1953-1961

Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not.

Robert McNamaraFormer U.S. Secretary of Defense

It is my fervent goal and hope…that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth.

Ronald Reagan, October 20, 1986

[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

5-Star Admiral William D. LeahyChief of Staff to President's Roosevelt and Truman, leader of Combined US-UK Chiefs of Staff during WWII